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Yeosang repeats the mantra to himself as he walks up the many steps to the mountain shrine. As he passes under rotten gates and wind-swept cobble, the words are the only semblance of a ward he holds onto.
Stow your fear. The weakness of men drives it to a hungry frenzy. Go swiftly and say nothing, let gods walk their paths alone.
Yeosang shivers as the late autumn air bites at him. It freezes just like the depths of winter this high up. His light armor and thin deer pelt are not suited to keep him warm to these freezing winds, though he’s sure even a fire could scarcely warm him. This mountain top has been long forgotten by men, so the cold naturally rests here. It’s a deep and chilling one.
His hands feel numb. He nervously plucks at the string of the dormant bow across his back.
“Stow your fear,” He mutters to the wind. “Gods walk their paths alone.”
The shrine is nearly lost to the thick layer of snow that covers the very top of the mountain. Yeosang seeks it outright, but even then, he struggles to see the faded blues of painted wood that once stood so proudly. Sunk into an alcove of the mountain, the shrine shies away from the world and almost seems to retreat in on itself now. A collapsed roof. Frozen candles. It is surely the one Yeosang seeks.
It takes a long while of shoveling and tossing snow about to finally find the entrance that he seeks. It lies far back under the snow and old roof, an old metal door that still stands coldly. He can only uncover a small portion of the top, but the detail carved within that small of a space is already breathtaking. He glances over it, traces with his fingers, and finds he can recall some of the old stories illustrated there. A god from the night, cresting down to the humans as a fallen star. He remembers every tale his mother used to tell him, and how he would pray with her every night for a wish granted.
With a small exhale, a fluttering of his eyes, he wishes one more time for these heavy doors to open.
He finds a bit of the roof rubble above him is still strong, an old log that once served as a rafter now acting as a sturdy place to hold onto. It allows him to curl up, to press his feet against the solid metal door to gain leverage. When another strong wind passes, he feels through his thin boots how the door rattles and shakes in its frame with the wind. Surely not easy, but he at least knows this door has room to move. He decides to try his luck.
He presses in hard with his feet until it creaks ever so slightly. It slowly budges along, until screeching loudly as he pushes it beyond the rubble inside. He pauses to catch his breath, before pushing again until the door stops wailing with a sharp noise. He’s hit something impassable, immoveable beyond the door. He lets go of the rafter to investigate if it’s yet enough to slink in.
A sour wind blows out from the doors in a wheezing gust, the familiar scent of dead magic rushing out and numbing Yeosang’s senses. He swiftly pulls his arm up to his nose and mouth, scrambling up from the entrance for a moment. It’s a thick enough concentration that he can actually watch it plume out from the doors like a dark smoke. It trails up into the air before him, mixing with the falling snow and eventually disappearing once it’s consumed enough magic from the snowflakes. There’s no point in trying to wait out this volume of magic he realizes. Taking a deep breath, plucking the string of his bow and praying again, he dives into the rift between the two heavy doors.
The flecks of dead magic initially sting when they land on his skin. Like a swarm of tiny, bloodsucking bugs, he flinches as the pins and needles assault his body. He pushes through the thick fog though, knowing it to be temporary. He wanders in the dark as his skin slowly grows numb to the sensation of the magic. The damp and old smell is starting to leave him too as he passes inward. He has to be quick, in a place so dark, he won’t be able to tell when his sight eventually goes. It’ll be truly too late then.
He reminds himself with a pinch to his skin, a hard and forceful one until he feels any sensation from it, that he has plenty of time. Stow your fear. Stow your weakness.
As he slowly walks down a steep flight of stairs in the dark, he begins to hear a new noise. It’s difficult to place when he’s never heard anything like it, only able to describe it as a thick sandstorm buffeting against stone walls. It pulses like a breath, the sound of countless little flecks of dead magic impacting inert stone. It’s been long dried of any life, and now stands stalwart against the force. Without any wind to howl with it, it leaves only the hissing and once silky sound of fine grains running past against one another.
And eventually, near the end of the steps, the dead magic begins to feel thick around his feet. There’s a force fighting back, a thick tar-like mixture that’s been sitting and coagulating for years now. The pulse of moving magic doesn’t just sound like a breath anymore, it feels like one as it moves his body to and fro with its motion. It breathes like a beast, this he knows, as it does come from one.
A pitiful noise comes from deeper in the chamber of thickened magic. A whine, a chirp, inhuman and weak as it senses something new in the void. As it shifts, the sound of flowing sand, splashing against dead stone hits Yeosang’s numbing ears. The sound is fuzzy.
“I’ve come for you.” Yeosang’s voice is muffled, is consumed by the magic as it struggles through the air. The being must hear him though, as it huffs and makes guttural noises with a thick tongue. Perhaps speech, from a time long ago, swallowed by layers upon layers of insanity. “You are the old god of this temple. Born from the heaven of night, and came to us upon a fallen star. We once worshiped you as one who could answer our wishes.” Albeit uselessly, Yeosang still swallows before he asks his next question. “Do you remember who you are?”
Silence. It stretches onwards until Yeosang sighs heavily.
“I’m sorry Seonghwa. We humans left you like this.”
The god shifts again in the inky blackness. Sand, particles of dead magic rush from his old body as he moves, the sound of nails scraping against stone. In the pitch black, Yeosang can see a large pair of eyes still gleaming with withheld magic. Just barely there does he see them, until another light sprouts from the god. The silhouette of a long clawed finger appears above his eyes, pressing into a divot of collarbones, over a barely illuminated heart. A gentle light glows, like one of the stars. It fades just as quickly to leave only the expectant eyes of Seonghwa, suspended upside down, staring longingly at him through the thick magic.
“You still hold magic. All these years later…” Yeosang chuckles sadly. “I’m so sorry. Hold onto it while you still can.”
Seonghwa makes a small noise like confusion, eyes blinking. The sound of dead magic echoes around the chamber again as the eyes move, upwards and eventually eclipsed by the dark again. Yeosang’s unsure what the god looks like anymore and in what way he’s been held within this chamber, and worries not another moment of thought to it.
“I’m here to set you free.” He says instead. The reason he came here for. “The time of magic and gods is over, Seonghwa. Humans have forsaken what you once offered us.” He waits for a response, one that does not come besides the sound of gentle breath. “An army is on its way here, to your shrine. They’ll be here in a few days time to kill you, and take what little magic you might have left.”
“I…” Yeosang shakes his head as he talks, numb arm slipping away from his mouth. “I simply can’t stand for it. I can’t let this be your fate after how much you once did for my family.”
Seonghwa is as silent as the stars. Yeosang feels like crying at this familiar feeling, of his god no longer hearing or listening to him. He takes a few backward steps up and out from the pool of magic.
“The door is open again. You can leave, and look at your stars one last time. If you still remember them,” Yeosang adds mournfully. He can barely hear his own voice anymore. When it’s clear that Seonghwa has nothing to say to him, he merely sighs and offers one final, deep bow to the god.
“I’m sorry. Please go in peace.”
Yeosang walked slowly up the stairs out of the shrine. His own footsteps did not reach his ears anymore, but he did not urgently rush out from the dark magic. It was different this time to him, to be so closely related to another untombed god. These gods' new forms were twisted and vile, but they never disgusted or frightened him. He refused to let his emotions show before them, lest it would inspire their hunger. But then, standing before Seonghwa, deep sadness gripped his heart.
He was already dead. Truly and fully, was that the sight of a god reduced to mortality.
He had reached the end of the stairs and the two heavy doors yet again. He climbed out slowly, out into the fresh air and let the magic return to his body. He had spent too long in there, his vision having started to fizzle away. The blue painted wood was a flat grey now, the corners of his eyes shrouded and dark. His entire body was numb. He preferred it, before the intense emotion would return.
For years, since his childhood, Seonghwa had been silent in answering them. He had never seen the god with his eyes like his ancestors had, yet he still worshipped him dearly. The little statue of him in their house was all that he had to pray to. Maybe he never truly believed in Seonghwa but held onto the hope instead. For his family, his mother, that the gods would not leave them in this terrifying new age.
What a fool he was. Seonghwa had died long ago, before Yeosang had ever been born. The only vestige left of Seonghwa now lays on Yeosang’s back, a golden bow that sleeps during the day and awakens at night. The starlit metal is freezing cold as Yeosang’s senses return.
He waits for a long time for his vision to clear. The gentle snowfall has given way to a stagnant air, the great grey clouds just out of Yeosang’s reach unmoving.
Until the hissing noise of a moving beast breaks the void of sound.
He sat atop the rubble of the old shrine, on the old shingled roof. Each one of them rattle like snake scales as the mountain quakes under the heavy steps of Seonghwa’s awakening. The dark mist fumes out from the two great doors. Sensing himself on the path of something wicked, Yeosang moved to jump up from the roof and off into the safety of the snow banks.
But he was still numb. His legs crumpled under the sudden weight of his body, as he tripped down into the splintered and snow-covered remains. His arms were feeble and could only barely drag him along into an alcove, body and bones freezing as a raspy breath wheezed from the old shrine. It was Seonghwa, looking upon the world for the first time in ages, a world much different from when he was first imprisoned.
The younger archerer saw the curling fog of dead magic steadily come closer. It dug into every nook and cranny of the old shrine to seek out more life to strip away. Perhaps in his insanity, that would be Seonghwa’s new goal for life as well. When his wide eyes and suspended body resolutely snapped down to Yeosang hiding in the rubble below him, he was sure that was his fate.
But the god did not move, hiss, cackle, in any way look joyed at such easy quarry. His head merely tilted in confusion.
Yeosang did not move. He stowed what fear he could.
Through the inky black night Seonghwa was clothed in, a gentle smile graced the god’s face. Small and uncertain, but still a smile through and through. When he moved again, stepping over the old roof of the shrine, he was gentle to not cause any of it to groan and shift too far. When the sound of his steps into the snow and the simmering fog of magic dispelled, did Yeosang finally move from the spot he was hidden within.
The snow down the mountain looked like ashes. It was dark and black in every sinking footprint. Long ago, Seonghwa would have never dreamed of disturbing nature in such a way. Yeosang could scarcely believe it now either, eyes focused on each imprint down the sheer mountainside. Maybe he should refrain from calling the god that just passed over him, who spared his life, Seonghwa.
He should accept that Seonghwa died long ago, in a dark and locked crypt, hidden away from his starlit skies.
Three days have passed since Seonghwa was untombed. Three days has Yeosang walked around the temperate mountain forests, trying to find what he should do next. Though his life for the past years has been freeing the old gods trapped in their world, it is not his only duty in life. He merely wanders to them out of a sense of pity in his heart. When one god is freed, Yeosang will light an incense for them, will pray all night, then awaken the next morning to travel to lands far off.
He cannot do so for Seonghwa. His heart hurts for him, so much, too much, that he cannot pass on from these mountains of their homes just yet. Every night he has burnt him an incense. Every morning he awakes with the mourning of his ancestors stuck to his bones, every notch of his spine. He supposes it comes from somewhere deep in him that refuses to pass into this new magicless age.
Three days. When the sun begins to set yet again, Yeosang finds a place to set up camp and a patch of the forest exposed to the sky where he could burn another incense stick. He sits in reverential silence until the stick has burnt halfway.
The incense he carries with him is an incredibly strong and pungent smell, one to flush and cleanse one’s soul. But even over the smell of herbs, something sour drifts on the wind. Yeosang sits still in his kneeling position. The scent comes again, a thick and pungent air that makes Yeosang cough and gasp.
It makes his nose tingle, then turn numb. His eyes fly open in fear. This is dead magic.
He’s pulled from the secluded trance he fell into, all the sounds and sights of the mountain around him coming back into focus. He’s camping on a steep north facing cliff tonight, praying at a small outcrop that stands out from the rest of the rock. It lets him see across the small copse of trees to another mountain ridge, and the hellish purple fire that licks up from the other side of the mountain.
It reeks on the wind, dead magic that both tries to consume the fire and only continues to fuel it. It turns into an oil slick that refuses to die, clinging to any surface it can. He can see distant figures in the smoke and against the towering flames. Soldiers of the kingdom here to claim Seonghwa’s heart for their magic hungry king.
And he knows that they have found him. Yeosang has followed his steps warily through the forest while he is too hesitant to leave him. The god has been wandering about aimlessly, passing in circles in seeming confusion. He leaves dead magic as he goes but in only small and gentle steps that can heal within days. This purple fire consumes the entire mountain side.
And the screams. Distant noises of a stuck animal, a fearful god, a sky-shuddering wail that even the stars can hear echoes over the mountain. They’re hurting Seonghwa, setting fire to the dead magic that cloaks him so that they may reach his physical body.
They’re killing him.
Another wheezing cry makes Yeosang move. He rushes back to his little camp, to the back of his tent where fresh ground has been disturbed. As he claws through the dirt, the starlight bow begins to reemerge. He’s done this for multiple nights ever since he suspected he was being followed. No one has since thought to look for his goods in the dirt, and it hides the bow away from its skies that let it awaken at night.
Even as Yeosang is still digging it out, it begins to gleam and hum as starlight falls across it. The gold-silver metal glows from the inside out, becoming a blinding heavenly light as its magic awakens. When he restrings it, the bow is supple and flexible in his hands. It trusts him as it always has.
Yeosang leaves without any care for the rest of his possessions. He runs to the outcrop he worshipped from, and leaps down the steep cliff face with a trained precision. From each nook to crop to eventual tree branch, Yeosang is as swift as the night wind.
Seonghwa wails in the distance. Yeosang races toward him with the last artifact of power that could save him.
The mountainside is a dizzying hell to walk through, bathed in purples and smelling of death and rancour. Flames tower on either side of Yeosang as he can no longer swiftly leap through the trees. He only knows where he’s heading by following the movements of frantic soldiers and Seonghwa’s animalistic roars.
He does not go fully unseen. The bow still gleams bright against the fire’s light and draws the attention of the soldiers around him. It is another magical artifact to covet and be stolen, and it places a bounty on Yeosang’s back that matches that of Seonghwa. Thankfully, he is a smaller and more agile target, and does not fall prey to any swords or arrows launched against him during his journey.
Nothing could truthfully stop Yeosang now. He follows instinct and the gentle lull of the bow’s magic to its creator. The fire and smoke is thick in every direction but it does not stop Yeosang. He finds his way around it, leaps through shallow flames when he is sure to not burn himself. He’s following shadows in the thick smoke as the bow tries to guide him where he wishes to be.
The smoke coils tighter in the center of the woods. It forces Yeosang to stop and catch his breath, coughing as his lungs fill. The dead magic burning away is also slowly turning him numb, his vision soon to turn colorless and grey. The bow in his hand seems to be trying to help, expunging some of the dead magic clinging to him, but it can only do so much. He only has so long to find and help Seonghwa.
A loud sound of soldiers yelling comes from the woods all around him, commands and screams echoing into clanging metal. Yeosang feels it before he hears it, the dead magic sucking in like a wave before crashing over with another frightful roar from Seonghwa. The god rampages nearby, through heavy steel armor and shields that clatter together, through the woods as trees and brush snap in his wake.
Yeosang moves carefully. The edge of a black fog is his guide to where Seonghwa is headed, which he follows to a clearing of the trees. It’s shrouded in a veil of night, Seonghwa standing motionless within the clearing with ragged breaths. He’s covered in flame, pitch black tongues of fire as it burns directly from the sources of black magic. Though the body is untouched by the flame, it is still crossed with sword marks and small arrows that manage to penetrate the barrier of magic. Still suspended upside down in the body of magic, chest glowing with what little power he has yet to use, Seonghwa is fearing.
When Yeosang stands, Seonghwa is instantly turning towards him and staring. His eyes are trembling.
He is there. The insanity is washed away for tonight only, replaced by the fear of death. When his eyes land upon the glowing starlight bow in Yeosang’s hands, hope glimmers in his eyes.
Miraculously, Seonghwa moves to him. A light passes through his eyes, and he begins to speak and motion with his hands.
They are words, but they are formed wrongly. Sounds that are familiar and unknown, words strung in nonsensical patterns. His hands and fingers fly about in a frenzy, as if grasping at the air and his chest. Yeosang watches him, tries to understand, but he simply cannot.
“My Lord, you must save yourself,” Yeosang shakes his head as he speaks. “You must flee from here. Follow your stars, wherever they might take you. Follow me if you must. You cannot die here.”
Seonghwa wails, a low and defeated sound as crystal tears form in his eyes. His human body hangs limply upside down, defeated as he tries to convey something to Yeosang yet again. The sound of his voice is all broken and croaking with unshed tears, words melding together with wobbles. When that doesn’t work, Seonghwa moves his hands up from where he clutches at his arms.
Out reaching hands. His palms glow from the light of Yeosang’s bow, staring upon it with hope and a deep-seated plea.
Plucking fingers, dancing at invisible harp strings. Seonghwa’s hands are shaking heavily and his fingers move in disjointed ways. They slowly meld together in their movement, mimicking plucking at a string. Yeosang looks upon his bow and the thickened string as he begins to understand.
Seonghwa moves pointedly. His hands grasp around nothing, mimicking the shaft of an arrow or sword. With a lurching movement, he stabs them to his chest, to his gleaming white heart under greyed skin.
He points to Yeosang. To the bow. Yeosang gasps.
“S — Seonghwa, I cannot kill you myself. Please, I cannot hold that burden.” Seonghwa shakes his head, stepping closer. Yeosang steps back. “They covet your heart. If I kill you, they will still take it. No matter how I run, with your heart or not, they will find me. Tell me that you understand that!”
Seonghwa continues to shake his head, continues to motion at his exposed heart. He’s trying to convey something that Yeosang cannot understand. Starlit tears are dripping from Seonghwa’s eyes, up his eyelids and off his brow as he continues trying to plead in tongues. Yeosang watches silently for a long moment, thinking, until his eyes flick over to the far side of the clearing at a gentle sound of a bowstring pulling.
Arrows begin to hail down on them again. One nearly misses Yeosang as it plants into the tree next to him, many more falling all around the little brush he has taken cover in. Seonghwa reacts with an animalistic huff and bark, turning around when arrows stab into the dark magical body that grows from him. Blinded by frenzy, Seonghwa charges towards the growing band of soldiers that have followed him here.
They’ve come with more than just archers. Seonghwa tears through the weak front line as they prepare another arrow rain, but finds resistance from the ironclad knights and agile firebombers appearing as well. The dark magic cloaking him deflects most of their attacks, until the little flaming satchels being thrown at him finally catch fire. His purple cloak alights quickly, violently, until it too melts away into hellfire oil. He is exposed to the iron swords, and Yeosang can hear it as he yelps and hisses when the swords find his skin.
Save him. Do something. Scathing barks are echoing in Yeosang’s mind. He came here to save Seonghwa, to do something as the little god saver he’s made himself out to be. Fear freezes him solid as he watches Seonghwa fighting back, slowly losing ground and becoming more frantic as he’s being overtaken by the army.
Stow your fear. Yeosang takes a step back into the darkness. The bow is shaking in his hand, barely concealed rage within its metal as it begins to heat up in his grasp.
Yeosang watches as the soldiers advance on Seonghwa. The dark magic body kneels and melts away in pain. More and more of his human form becomes exposed, defenseless when he no longer has a large animalistic body to rage about with.
Seonghwa’s head touches the forest floor as he loses his cloak. The soldiers advance quickly onto him, swords like the maws of hungry dogs seeking his flesh. He roars and screams in pain, trying to scare them off as they seek his heart.
They’re going to kill him.
Yeosang’s foot digs into the dirt behind him. He twists his whole body, forming a strong archer’s stance to protect him from recoiling. His hands are shaking as he forfeits his own chance to escape, plants himself firmly to ready his bow. Fear consumes him, eyes wide and chest heaving, but he refuses to let himself run.
Seonghwa reels up in pain as a knight lands a blow on him. He thrashes and wails, sending the army surrounding him flying across the clearing. On Seonghwa though is one knight, standing atop his body, trying to press him back into the dirt to keep him still. Seonghwa’s heart flashes white as he tries to summon the energy to throw this one off, but he is insistent. Seonghwa fights wildly and madly to throw the man from his form. His heavy armor keeps him planted on his body within the melting cloak, a strong sword planted into the dirt beside them to keep some sort of stable hold. He waits until Seonghwa lulls, regaining his power to thrash about, when he pulls the sword from the dirt and grasps it in a strong fist. He raises it up, aligning himself, primed and ready to strike at the white gleam of the god’s heart for when he stills once again.
Yeosang’s chest constricts. His breath is punched from him as the two fight for control, as Seonghwa slowly loses his strength to fend off the sword. He raises the bow finally, the metal shaking and burning in his grasp with the need to fight. As he pulls the string back, the bow stills as the magic flows through his arms, back into the string, the magic starlight swiftly forming into an arrow. It sits between his fingers, nocked and ready and burning.
“Seonghwa!” He screams to them, arm tensing as the arrow waits to fly. Seonghwa looks towards him, hands grasped around the soldier's leg and sword blade to fight it off. When his glowing heart is visible, he readjusts his aim. “Flee from here!”
The arrow flies with a loud hiss.
It glimmers like a comet as it flies across the clearing. It hits Seonghwa in the chest with a massive burst of light that explodes and crackles over them all. Yeosang still flies back from the intense power of the shot, closing his eyes to avoid the bright blinding light as it consumes the clearing. His hearing rings slightly, the gentle sound of sparkling starlight, fire, and the chaos of soldiers returning to him. He dares not to look upon Seonghwa’s form now, but he can tell that the soldiers still moving now have their focus on him.
It was such a simple plan that works for now. He drags the soldiers away into an unburnt section of forest where he can easily glide among the tree branches. The bow surely taunts them as he goes, a glowing after trial among the leaves that keep them drawn away from Seonghwa. Truthfully, Yeosang cannot save Seonghwa on his own. His bow is strong but it cannot face entire armies, or a god if he were to turn on him. The aimed shot was equal parts stalling and hoping that it may destroy whatever the army seeks from Seonghwa.
These forests are not kind to the army currently within them. Yeosang knows it himself, the thick canopies of leaves prevent arrow rains and the gnarled underbrush will trip the heavily armored knights. Yeosang is swift enough to always stay ahead of his captors, able to dance just within their reach and outside of any harm. The little game of chase he keeps this militia suspended in is all to this plan, until he hears the chilling scrape of flint on steel.
It gives him pause, slowing down to find the source of the new threat. Though his vision is succumbing to the dark magic around them, the faint orange glow of a firebomb still registers in his mind. A firebomber must have joined his little pack, as now they are throwing the bursting satchels up into the tree line. Yeosang narrowly dodges one tossed towards him. With a little taunt of the bow, he flees before the spray of burning saltpeter.
Beyond just burning Seonghwa away, the firebombers have come as well to support the militia. If the forest stands in a human’s way, why does the human not simply tear it asunder? Yeosang has seen that same answer time and time again with armies. The fire razes their path for them, giving them flat and dead ground to walk upon without opposition. If they kill the ground first, the dead magic has nothing to sustain upon. In this magicless age, rulers command by the law of beasts; kill, and kill again.
The tree branches that Yeosang weaves through are slowly becoming consumed by fire. The firebombers on his trail have grown wise and have steered him closer to the consuming blaze of the forest, trying to flush him out to the ground. He’s done well so far to avoid them, but his mind is clouded. The images of Seonghwa suffering, the futile hope that he can help, the knowledge that even his homeland has become consumed by a king’s greed. He does not see the branches before him anymore. He does not see the flaming satchel that leaps onto his shoulder.
A white hot and angry flash of fire at his side makes Yeosang flinch. A satchel has burst directly against him. His deerskin cloak took most of the blast, but the short and scratchy fur is now quickly taking blaze. As Yeosang continues to run away, he spreads the fire through the trees, and slowly becomes enveloped in flame. A second burst of flame by his foot has him finally leaping from the branches and down to the ground.
The fire must be put out. Yeosang moves to quickly pull the cloak from his shoulder and leave it to burn away, but his pursuers have taken much land on him. When Yeosang hits the ground, he hears the chunk of heavy armor next to him, the cry of a knight as they swing down with their sword. A blur. It’s all a blur as Yeosang tries to take his bearings, and only clears when a burning, scarlet red pain envelopes his thigh.
The sword found purchase. A weakness in his armor, giving way for the iron to dig deep into his skin, to cruelly slide over his alighting muscles as the knight pulls back to find another opening.
Yeosang cries out, pain and anger in a resounding bark, swinging up with the bow to protect himself. The knight's sword scrapes down the length of the starlit metal, creating a shower of sparks that crests over them. Yeosang sees flashes of his face through every parry, must guess his next move from those seconds that the starlight bow illuminates them. The corner of the forest they fight is dark and just out of the fire’s reach. A horrid place to die. Each deflection by Yeosang has the bow shuddering and warming in his grip, both yearning to fight and survive.
A lull in their clash lets Yeosang move. He quickly rolls back, a move that he would naturally do, but cries out as his thigh gives him a tearing hell. His vision fuzzes further into the magicless grey, but he swiftly kneels and aims his bow. The starlit arrow is already half formed on the string before Yeosang begins to pull back. He aims at the silhouette of the knight before him, and lets the arrow fly true. Just as it had with Seonghwa, it explodes into a firework of light. A dazzling distraction to let Yeosang slip away, injured and all.
He forces himself to sprint as far as he can, just a few short paces until tears spring to his eyes at the pain. Though his cloak had been tossed aside during the fight, he still feels much like the deer he took it from. Standing on uneasy legs, limping off wounded from his would-be hunter. The will to fight drains from him when he realizes he is safe for the moment in this darkness, and he wilts into himself to lean heavily onto a tree next to him.
They’re growing closer by the second. The smoke of the encroaching blaze is beginning to reach Yeosang, though he cannot smell it anymore. His vision is grey from the dead magic, his hearing nearly completely gone. The air around him is stuffy from the fires, but his skin feels cold and numbed. He’s taken too long to save Seonghwa.
It’s true, then. Yeosang has little else he can do for Seonghwa. It has never been anything much, besides taking the target off his back. But he cannot kill Seonghwa and take his heart for himself. He refuses to become one of those half-men, feasting on the hearts of gods and turning into something vile and unknown to even magic itself. Injured as he may be, he’ll run as far as he can. Fight as hard as he can, with the starlight bow still fuming in his hands. He shares its anger, but not its strength. But he must still fight.
Fingers dance at the wound on his thigh. He feels the slick blood, cascading down his leg and staining everything around him. With a choked cry, he clenches his teeth and limps onward to pull the few warriors away.
His limping eventually brings him to the edge of the forest again. On another outcrop of rock does the rocky mountain continue again, a small band of dirt and stone before it gives way to a steep decline down to the valley. It’s quiet all around him. Both by the distance from the battle and the dark magic constricting all of his senses. The starlit sky above is visible, only barely through the growing columns of smoke behind him. The stars are silent and unmoving. Perhaps they are in mourning already.
Yeosang collapses finally, when he sees there’s nowhere left to go but to retrace his steps. It’s impossible to keep going, wounded deeply and scared so thoroughly of approaching death. In further away times, he’d wish to Seonghwa that he’d live to see the night again. That he could carry him through his battles, using the bow he once blessed to his people. The bow still lays beneath Yeosang. His vision has lost all definition to the tears and sapping magic, and it now simply burns as a pure white rod of curved metal. With nothing else to pray to, Yeosang whispers his prayer to it.
His own voice does not reach his ears.
For a long while, he lays prone with the bow beside him. His leg continues to bleed, continues to make him grow fuzzy in his consciousness. He does not resign himself to death, but if it were to take him, he has no power to argue against it. Laying on the dirt with the bow beside him, Yeosang simply rests, recovers his energy, to see if fate would have him survive this night. Each breath grows calmer, slower, more and more languished as he can’t seem to draw in enough air.
Through the haze of his senses, Yeosang feels a lull. The forest is frozen. It’s something familiar to Yeosang after spending his life among trees, something innate in each leaf and branch to physically hold as something approaches. With his little energy left, Yeosang sits up to look at the forest behind him.
It’s nearly pure white as the fire grows closer. Sweat runs down his skin, but he’s still numbed to any temperature at all. Though the hellfire grows closer around him, it moves unnaturally. The flames spasm and seem nearly alive, the jumping sparks like hands as it tries to grasp onto something. The dead magic at the ground, having turned to a viscous oil, is sizzling and popping, and slowly shrinking away as the fire consumes its own self. Any fire will do that. It has enough force to overcome even dead magic in certain quantities, but not to this degree. Not this quickly. Through muddled thoughts, he knows that the dark magic is being consumed by something stronger than the flame, and is being erased away by a force of pure magic.
The forest draws in air, draws in the flame towards itself with an inhale, and exhales just the same with more of that magic force. The hellfire panics in the calming wave, before it is neutralized and returned to simply nothing. Yeosang feels it flow through him too, some of the affliction within him easing away to relieve his senses. His skin grows slightly warmer with feeling, his vision growing sharper and more colored. Just barely does the muffling snow from his ears clear, just to hear the crackling and snapping of fire and trees, to hear the panicked sounds of a scattered army.
He sees the archers climb out first from the brush, the firebombers and knights following. They are all fleeing and frightened, as if a demon is chasing them. Yeosang sits still as they weave around him, seeing a few soldiers that trip look back in fear. He is largely forgotten in the chaos, as the army tries to flee down the slope of the mountain, or find somewhere less treacherous. Yeosang keeps the bow clutched to his chest as he tries to look past all of them to the approaching force of magic.
There’s a gentle sound, an exhale like one tossing in their sleep, before a pure white light glows from the wildfire. Yeosang sees it before the rest of the army does. A point of starlight, a glowing magic of the heavens that forms into a pointed spear.
It fires out and impales the ground just before Yeosang. It’s not a passive weapon either, as it begins to glimmer with withheld power.
Yeosang gasps, pulls the bow to his chest, and is blown away in the glimmering cloud by the starlight javelin.
He crests over the side of the cliff. His body impacts the hard stone again, punching a gasp and a yelp from him, his arms frantically moving in order to gain purchase. Though fingers find nothing, Yeosang eventually stops tumbling down the cliff when he reaches a flatter outcrop yet again. There’s chaos all around him; he hears soldiers further down the valley yelling, the ones above him screaming as another heavenly blast sends them flying. The light is growing brighter, the gentle sounds of an indifferent being sighing as their path is continuously blocked.
Yeosang’s hands ache and burn. He is still grasping tight onto the metal bow. It shivers and wails lowly in his grip, filled too full with starlight magic that it seems to be in pain. He worries that it might be anguished, perhaps too exposed to the dead magic, but he sees that is not the case once his hand eases. It is shaking with the need to move towards the light.
Another javelin flies from the ledge, this time cresting over the cliffside and down to the valley of soldiers. Yeosang watches it arc like a comet, settling heavy in the valley before imploding into a large blast. Another windy sigh, unsatisfied.
His eyes struggle to peer through the bright burning light at the top of the cliff. The forest is still burning behind it, but the deadly purple tint to the smoke is gone. The dead magic is gone, Yeosang himself feeling its poison slowly seeping away from his senses. As the light gets brighter, the illuminated figure within draws closer to the cliffside.
He moves gently. Wrapped in light, wrapped in the flowing clothes of the god of stars, the figure rests a hand over his pure white heart that shines through his skin. No longer suspended upside down, half consumed by the body of dead magic, the god walks upright on his own two feet. He looks around warily, searching, calling out gently in a ringing tone for something lost.
Seonghwa.
Seonghwa.
Tears spring to Yeosang’s eyes suddenly, a turbulent emotion bubbling up through him. His god still lives, shines in all his glory that his tales once spoke of. He survived the hellfire, the army’s onslaught, the coil of mortal death that nearly took him. Though distant stil, his face is achingly familiar, just like that of the statue kept by his mother’s bedside. Seonghwa’s face, unmarred by insanity, slowly moves to look directly at Yeosang resting on the rock.
His god looks at him.
His head tilts curiously.
And he smiles.
Gentle as starlight, Seonghwa hums pleased. Gentle as the night wind, his god steps down the cliff face, feet suspended in air and grazing over the stone. Gentle as a whispered prayer, Seonghwa reaches Yeosang, kneels, and entwines him within his robes to hold him close to his chest.
In the reverential silence of Seonghwa, the heavy weeping sobs from Yeosang into his chest, he feels a curl of lips over his ear. They do not speak, but they imprint the words into his very soul.
Thank you.
Starlight wraps around them as ribbons, a magical swell like a coursing river. Seonghwa lifts them both up, holding his broken savior to his chest as he looks to the sky. With magic returned, Seonghwa and Yeosang become as bright as a fallen star. Seonghwa steps off the flat outcrop and into the air, suspended. Rising up with each step, they become entwined with starlight, cresting up into the night sky and streaming away.
Far away to the north, towards snow covered peaks, towards the quieter and calmer.
Yeosang awakens in cold and shallow water. He lays on his back, staring at a painted sky of stars and galaxies, shivering and gasping as he comes to.
His body no longer is numb, and does not burn from his wounds. His thigh does not bleed. When he moves, nothing aches or cries out. Once before has he felt this full body calm and rejuvenation from the purest of magics. And now again does it envelop him in this mountain pool. He stares up at the stars for a long moment, until soft silk, floating in the water, drifts over his cheek.
The silk curls around him from somewhere above his head, floating outward and caressing him in the gentle ribbons. He stirs upright, sitting on his knees and turning around to see the presence behind him. Sitting in the water with him is Seonghwa, beautiful and perfect in his starlit silks, his chest glowing healthily with all of his returned magic. He looks to the sky above, before matching Yeosang’s gaze with a warm smile.
“Hello Yeosang, my little star. You’ve done so well.”
He’s too shocked for words. Just as he was on the cliff, Seonghwa’s physical presence before him shocks him into silence, unable to believe his god truly lives, truly sits before him after all these eons. Yeosang figured he would die, having never seen his god or any statues again of him in his life. That turbulent emotion is trying to force its way out of him again, a barely restrained sob as tears return. He swallows them just for now, in favor of asking the single question that he’s wondered of since the turn of the age.
“How are you still alive? After all this time, after such a fate?”
“Devotion.” Seonghwa is so gentle in his movements. Just as the silk in the water, his head tilts in a fluid and soft motion. His smile is full and true. “I refused to die until I could see my stars again, one last time. It’s all I had to hope for in that coffin.” He looks up to them now, gorgeous under their glimmering light, reflected in his doe-like eyes. “But that’s not the full answer. I believe you know it well.”
Yeosang pauses. He truly does not, cannot even try to recall as his mind is a blur. The wounds from the battle are healed, but his mind is still a mess from all that he survived. His god takes this small pity on him to answer. “Truly, you don’t? What of your devotion?”
“Mine…?” Seonghwa nods gently, reaching out to take both of Yeosang’s hands. He pulls them from the fists they formed on his knees, opens up his fingers to lay against his palms. Seonghwa is so warm, untouched by the water. He looks straight into Yeosang as he talks gently, just barely above a whisper.
“Yeosang, gods may be powerful beings, but we can only exist when we inhibit the minds of our followers. Without you, we are nothing more than magic itself. The gentle breeze, the raging flames, the swirling tides… Without you, I would have turned into nothing more than a force of that dark magic.”
When Seonghwa speaks, he speaks with his entire being. Yeosang had never seen it chronicled in their stories or paintings, always making him a stoic and calm figure above all else. But here, right now, Seonghwa speaks as if his very words would undo them both. The weight from them is so heavy and true to Yeosang. He’s seen it time and time again, gods that have passed and turned into a pure element of their domain, sparkling away into nothingness. He thinks of Seonghwa, turning into trapped starlight in his crypt, being consumed into the whispers of nothingness by the dead magic all about him.
The tears simmering in his chest finally rise to his eyes. His voice strains, but still speaks clear. “I simply couldn’t let you go. I wasn’t sure why, but I couldn’t forget about you, couldn’t stop praying to you as I always had…” One tear frees itself to roll down Yeosang’s cheek. He can hear it hit the still water below them. “I thought I was being childish. Selfish. Was I truly saving you?”
“You kept me alive. The little starlight left in me refused to die, because I heard you. Far out in the world, even in my tomb, I felt you, still praying to me.” Seonghwa moves painfully slowly as he reaches up to wipe Yeosang’s cheek. “I was no longer myself. I can scarcely remember the past eternity I spent in there. But I refused to die when someone out there continued to believe in me. You saved me, Yeosang. Just as you have with so many other gods.”
Yeosang considers his words. They let his tears flow without stop, though he simply stares at Seonghwa for as long as he can. All he can think about, see in his mind, is everyone from his village and family that still believed in Seonghwa. He sees his own mother, bedridden by the illness that would take her, hands clasped in prayer. She begged until her last breath that their god would protect them. And how he did, Yeosang now sitting here with that very god holding him, cradling him as he weeps. He wants to fall back into his chest and be held. But so many questions still hound him, questions he must ask before Seonghwa leaves.
He wipes his eyes and breathes as deep as he can. “How — How do you know of that?”
“What, my star?”
“The other gods — saving them. How?”
Seonghwa chuckles. “The starlight bow. I watched you through it’s being, heard you and all your prayers. Your successes in freeing the other trapped gods. It was the only way I could survive being locked in that tomb by watching over you. Truthfully, I could not do anything for you. But I did not have to. You used that bow just as I would have.”
The bow. Yeosang had forgotten about it since he awoke. He does not feel it over his back, or see it sitting around them.
“Where is it now?” Seonghwa wordlessly takes Yeosang’s hand, presses it slowly to his still glimmering chest. He feels the warmth, the thrum, the familiar pulse of magic that the bow once held. The gentle chuckle that works through Seonghwa flows through Yeosang’s fingers like magic.
“I’m sorry to take your greatest ally from you. Its magic will carry me back into the night sky. I gave your people that bow for that exact purpose, that we would help one another. I granted their wish, so that one day you would grant me my own.” Seonghwa says. At his words, Yeosang merely shakes his head.
“Take it. Take it from this world and back to the stars, where we cannot use it against one another.”
They both know the bow cannot exist here any longer, not with how its magic is coveted. Truthfully, it has fulfilled its purpose in this realm. It saved Seonghwa, the one wish he had left in his people, and now is able to carry him back to his home.
It goes unspoken, but they both know it. Seonghwa hums and nods quietly, looking around the mountain pool they sit within, the towering peaks beyond the trees. “It’s so sad to see how you humans have changed. We once walked side by side through these lands, we danced and rejoiced together, toiled and wept together… So much has changed, but so much has stayed.” His eyes focus at one specific point, Yeosang following his gaze. They stare at the line of flowering bushes that surround the pool. “This was once a hot spring. It’s cold and shallow now, but the little flowers around us are still blooming.” He smiles sadly at them, the little white stars that sit among the bushes. “They still smell the same, after all this time. How I’ll miss them.”
The sun is rising just barely in the distance, the night beginning to abate. The stars above them are dimming slowly. They both know. When Seonghwa stands, Yeosang joins as well, hands still entwined.
“Seonghwa,” Yeosang pauses. The god waits as well, looking to Yeosang and taking both his hands. He listens so sweetly. “The bow is gone. The task itself was already impossible but now… Now how am I supposed to free the other trapped gods?”
Seonghwa shakes his head gently. “You cannot. What a lovely heart you were given to care for all of us, but you cannot save us all.” The light from his chests pulses gently, beginning to grow. “Fate bends in ways we cannot see. Even for me, fate has been both cruel and kind. It’s all for what we will ultimately become. It led us to one another, that I would take the starlight bow from you. It has relieved you of your task as well, my little warrior.”
The light envelops both of them, but Yeosang does not feel the magic surrounding him this time. The water gently ripples around them as his god begins to float, preparing for his skyward returnal.
“Yeosang, stay here and make a home. Return to your family, whoever that may be. You’ve done so well with the power I gave you.” He pets Yeosang’s hair gently, his other still entwined with his. “All I ask is that you stay in these mountains, so that I may still reach you.”
Tears are falling from Yeosang’s eyes, blurring out the already obscured figure of Seonghwa. He nods, closing his eyes as the light grows too stand to withstand. “Okay. Okay. Please go in peace.”
“And may you go in peace as well.” He holds Yeosang, unable to move it seems. He feels Seonghwa looking him over, the hand from his hair falling away. “You’ve done so well, Yeosang. You have my blessing, and my thanks.” He glows bright, the hands becoming nothing but a gentle wind against his skin.
The light becomes a feather-light press against his forehead, his eyes, his lips. “May my stars always guide you.” The night wind that Seonghwa becomes blows through Yeosang, taking the bright light with it. He opens his eyes and turns around, watching as Seonghwa raises up into the sky as a shooting star.
Just as the stories said, as the old iron door inscribed. Seonghwa is a gleaming light, leaving a trail of gold and blue behind him in his wake. The light stays above the pool for just a moment for one final moment, one final look at the world.
An otherworldly laugh of mirth and joy echoes over the starlit mountains. A gentle and relieved, truly, truly free laugh, of one finally returning home. When the sun finally begins to glow in the distance, Seonghwa flies off towards the retreating night. He goes further, higher, past the clouds, all the way towards the fading stars until his light disappears with them in the growing sunrise.